


Nine Sleepless Nights

by Telesilla



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Drabble Sequence, Drugs, Gen, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-17
Updated: 2004-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-05 18:37:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telesilla/pseuds/Telesilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine drabbles on dealing with insomnia, one for each actor. This is a companion piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/44813">Nine Different Cooks</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nine Sleepless Nights

Sean Astin worries when he has insomnia. When they first had the baby, he'd get up to check her breathing, and more than once, he's reached over to the other side of the bed to rest his hand on Christine's back in order to feel the reassuring movement as she breathes. When he's working, he worries about his lines, or his fellow actors, or whether the lighting that kept not working this afternoon will work in the morning. On Rings it's worse, and he finds himself wondering how everyone else can seem so damn carefree on a project this size.

* * *

Bean channel surfs when he can't sleep; one advantage to being a footie fan is that somewhere, someone's almost always showing a match. Of course, watching matches called in Dutch, for example, are bloody odd what with it sounding enough like English to throw him off, but over the years, he's caught some amazing games. And, without a stake in who wins, he can enjoy the sheer artistry of the sport. On the rare occasion he can't find an actual game, he can usually find people talking about it; he's learned strange bits of any number of languages that way.

* * *

When he's sleepless, Orlando likes to light up. Alcohol isn't any good at times like this, and pills remind him too much of his time in hospital. But a nice bowl full of weed will calm his racing thoughts to the point where he can sit still and just relax. Barring weed, which isn't always practical, he pulls off, making it last as long as he can, stopping and forcing himself to wait a certain number of moments, counted in heartbeats, before starting up again. It doesn't matter if it gets him to sleep or not; it feels fucking fantastic.

* * *

When he can't sleep, Billy allows himself to think of things that are too terrifying to think of during the day. He knows that he's the opposite of most people, but for him, fear is somehow easier in the dark. Most of the time, of course, his thoughts deal with loss, but fear comes in a lot of different flavors, and on certain nights he wonders what life would be like if he had played it safe and refused to take any chances. Not all fears are bad; some nights he entertains himself with absurdities like invasions by giant bears.

* * *

Ian has known enough sleepless nights to have a very set routine. He starts with a warm bath, warm enough to leave his skin a little pink. Following that, it's hot milk, always with a healthy dash of whiskey, and a book, but never the book he's reading for pleasure during daylight hours. No, insomnia calls for difficult books on subjects he knows little or nothing about. Over the years he's found that concentrating very carefully on something such as quantum mechanics or the history of salt is usually enough to pass the time until either sleep or daylight comes.

* * *

Dom chatters incessantly when he can't sleep, delivering a running monologue in which he relives the events of the day. He's got quite the routine down -- Dom's insomnia is unfortunately rather frequent -- and he can call his day like a footie match or announce it in the round plumy tones of a BBC News anchor. He tests his accents and imitations that way, and when he finds himself using the same person's accent or inflection over and over again, he knows it for a sign that he's either got a crush or is falling in love with someone.

* * *

Sometimes, when Viggo can't sleep, he tells himself stories, little fragmented bits of narrative with no ending or beginning. Other times, he speaks all the Elvish he knows, although he stopped that for a while after he lapsed into the Black Speech one night and then dreamed that his flying bus crashed in a redwood forest where he was attacked by a wild boar wielding a cricket bat. Still other nights he takes mental pictures of things that aren't -- Billy juggling glowing balls of purple glass or Orlando completely covered with leaves until he looks like a topiary elf.

* * *

When John can't sleep, he writes to friends. It's an old, comfortable habit; he remembers one of his friends saying that she felt guilty she realized that she looked forward to John having sleepless nights. For a week afterwards, he sent her one line postcards describing the weather until she called and laughed at herself with him. He likes to eat while he writes, something simple like a good bit of cheese, fresh bread, and, of course, a glass of wine, and if there's a second glass, his letters trail off into nothing as he nods off over his desk.

* * *

That Elijah sometimes can't sleep comes as a surprise to those who are used to seeing him sacked out in a director's chair. But there are nights when he can't and he takes to his games, either the X-Box or the game boy. He likes playing the game boy in bed; he feels like a kid again, reading with a flashlight under the covers after he was supposed to be asleep. The irony of the feeling isn't lost on him; he sometimes fights it by smoking cloves in a defiant way as he guides a snowboarder over increasingly difficult terrain.

end

**Author's Note:**

> Um ... will you believe that I couldn't sleep?


End file.
